Wikipedia:Administrators/2019 request for comment on inactivity standards

Background

In 2011, English Wikipedia first established activity standards for administrators. Except for some very small changes, this policy has remained essentially the same since that time. The purpose of this RFC is to examine the effectiveness of the policy and adjust it if needed.

Recent events

In late 2018 there was a rash of administrator accounts being compromised. The situation led to several admins being removed. A number of these accounts were almost totally inactive or had not used administrative tools in a long time.

Around the same time there were several discussions on the bureaucrats' noticeboard about largely inactive admins who nevertheless technically meet the requirements under the inactivity policy and therefore continue to retain the tools despite not really using them and not being reasonably engaged with the community. Some outreach to almost totally inactive admins was attempted but there was little response.

These two situations highlight the two potential issues with mostly inactive admins and the current policy structure: security breaches, and admins who are out of touch with the community. The following proposals are aimed at rectifying these issues by closing perceived loopholes in the current policy.

Proposals

Each proposal will have sections for supporting, opposing, and general discussion. Please keep threaded discussions in the discussion sections. The proposals presented are not mutually exclusive, you may support or oppose as many or as few as you see fit. For discusion not related to specific proposals, please use the general discusion section.

User space

The current standard for retaining the tools is to make one edit per year. There is no requirement as to the substance of this edit. A small minority of administrators will simply make an edit or two to their own talk page or other user space pages, thus ensuring they retain the tools for another year without actually engaging with the project. Should the minimum edit requirement already in place be modified to specify that the user in question make at least one edit outside of their own userspace?

Raise minimum edits required

Currently, the minimum number of edits required each year to retain the tools is one. Should the minimum number of required edits be raised to ten, in order to demonstrate at least marginal engagement with the project?

Logged actions

While not all administrative tasks require the use of the admin toolset, it is reasonable to expect that an administrator who was even marginally engaged in admin work would find the occasional cause to use the tools. Should the activity requirements include a requirement to use administrative tools at least once every two years, regardless of number of edits?

Notifications

When the inactivity policy was created, it was mandated that admins about to have their tools removed be notified of the impending action, on their talk page and by email if available. This has resulted in an observable trend of almost totally inactive admins who repeatedly receive such messages, and make a few token edits in the window between the notification and the suspension of their rights. Given that we have had an inactivity policy for seven years and we expect administrators to be familiar with the administrator policy of which it is a part, is it reasonable to remove mandatory notifications from the inactivity policy?

General discussion

Please use this section to discuss the issue of admin inactivity generally. For discussion of the RFC itself, please use the talk page